


Adrift

by Carrogath



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8845852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrogath/pseuds/Carrogath
Summary: Angela charts a new course for Winston's Overwatch, and Fareeha finds herself a little lost in the thick of it.





	

Talking to Angela nowadays is an exercise in bureaucratic tedium. She joined the organization only begrudgingly, after weeks of negotiation with Jack and Winston (and, as Fareeha had learned later on, McCree), and under the provision that she had the freedom to leave whenever she wanted and to use the organization’s resources for her own personal ends. They’d been desperate for a legitimizing force, a linchpin to hold Overwatch together in case the authorities ever descended upon them—most of its former members were either presumed dead or in hiding, not to mention the terms of the Petras Act. Angela was not a diplomat, and far from a politician, but she was the closest thing they had to a spokesperson, and she’d hated them from the start.

She still does, by all accounts. Five months in and they almost never see each other; there are, of course, the lingering glances, the brief, trivial conversations, and the incessant flirting. They talk politics and religion, trade perspectives and old stories, find common ground on the shores of the Mediterranean, on the banks of the Nile and in the oppressive heat of the Levant. Angela has been everywhere and has something in common with everyone, though she’s a reluctant conversationalist. Lena claims that Angela is paying her special attentions, and to be honest, she totally is.

Jesse works out _something_ with Helix to authorize the use of her suit in Overwatch operations, though he won’t tell her exactly what. She’s contracted to them as an HSI employee, under some kind of international law that skirts around the Petras Act, some legal loophole of some small country in which Helix operates. She has yet to see action as a member of Overwatch, however. She sits in on briefings, in a small conference room in Gibraltar, lingers on base, and then leaves a few days later for a Helix assignment. She sees Angela in her office then, making phone calls, writing reports, gleaning through paper after paper. Angela can’t decide what role she wants to fulfill in Winston’s Overwatch, so she ends up doing a bit of everything, and as the weeks wear on she digs herself in deeper, muttering half-formed thoughts about Siberia and South Korea among scattered tablets and cups of coffee and a multitude of flickering, silent blue screens.

She argues that they have to build public relations. Repeal the Petras Act. She criticizes Jack’s fantasies of Overwatch remaining an illicit, undercover organization that orchestrates Talon’s defeat under their noses, contends that the idea is just as bad if not worse than Blackwatch. She is sharp with Jack—she’s even sharp with Ana, once the dust has finally settled regarding her years-long disappearance and she becomes a living, legal citizen of Egypt again—and pressures them at every turn. It’s hard to watch. Fareeha can see the lines on Commander Morrison’s face deepen, already worn from stress and from age, and Angela has Switzerland and every country who still enforces the Petras Act at her beck-and-call, primed to shut them down the second they get the chance.

Fareeha juggles her squad at Helix with her position at Overwatch, and senses hostility in their behavior toward her, senses betrayal. She wants to apologize for failing them, and she wants to quit. Khalil’s death still weighs uneasy on her mind, a stray lump on top of everything else. Strange people walk in and out of Watchpoint Gibraltar every day. She imagines they’re from Helix, probing Winston about her suit, about her work, about her life. About her mother. Irrationally, she imagines them being critical of her—Fareeha has never been good enough, not for her mother, not for Helix and not for God. She finds herself pressured and alone, her mother rising from the dead like a specter, coming back to judge her for everything she’s ever done. She has nightmares fueled by guilt. She has dreams about Angela. Sometimes they meld, not always logically, and she dreams of falling to her death in a flaming hangar, among molten metal bodies and the smell of burning flesh.

It’s odd, to be on good terms with Angela when she’s so contentious with Overwatch itself. She’s polite to Hana and Zarya whenever they arrive as representatives of their countries; South Korea and Russia publicly shun the Petras Act and welcome Overwatch’s support. Public officials and military officers stream in as well, but in secret—some even on “vacation.” Worse, there are intelligence agencies of all kinds probing the organization, and that’s where Angela works most closely with Jack and McCree, to guard them and their intel against Talon and hostile foreign powers. In the Middle East and North Africa it is her mother who goes and asks favors on behalf of Overwatch; prior to that Fareeha had been making sluggish progress using her mother’s good name. She doesn’t fit the same way the others do; in an institution as unstructured as Overwatch, she finds herself grasping, untethered, awash in an inimical sea. She knows that Helix is watching her, and the thought is suffocating.

She and Angela stop flirting, at some point. But they never stop staring. As Overwatch pushes forward, Angela sheds her other responsibilities, one by one. The medical research she’d been conducting she assigns to someone else. She attends fewer conferences, makes fewer trips outside, sequesters herself in her office in Gibraltar, surrounded by Winston’s communications technology, some of it experimental and all of it perfectly secret. This is her chance, she tells Fareeha. This is her chance to do everything she had never managed to do before. She admits, in private, that there is no possible way one person could manage everything she hopes to accomplish, but then again Angela has never been one to work in the realm of plausibility. She may have been a doctor in her past life, but now maybe she can be something else. She’s a genius by many measures, and Fareeha wonders if sometimes all the praise and accolades go to her head. She hoards compliments like a dragon hoarding gold, and though she’s gracious about criticism, Fareeha can tell that it still stings. The entire world could bow to her, and she would never be satisfied.

Life moves on. Fareeha is assigned another few trivial patrols around Omnic-heavy urban developments. On another occasion she works with the Egyptian Army to suppress a latent Omnic threat. Fareeha has never been assigned to anything but anti-Omnic operations; she’s killed people before, combatants from Talon cells and other extremist groups who have a vested interest in unleashing the God Programs on the world. Her missions are largely apolitical, regardless. No one will argue if you kill a terrorist, and even fewer will complain if you destroy a hostile robot. She feels more guilt over the people she failed to save than over her victims—she is never good enough for anyone. No amount of recognition will allay that.

Fareeha returns to Gibraltar from Abu Dhabi late one night, after most of the rest of the crew has retired. The base is deathly silent. She has to file a report with Winston after her debriefing tomorrow, though she knows Angela will most likely have a look at it too. She passes by her office on the way to her quarters—it isn’t on the way, but she isn’t in a hurry—and peeks in only to see Angela staring back. Her hair is down and her coat is hanging off the back of her chair, the sleeves of her blouse rolled past her elbows. She looks weary, but still alert, and whereas most days she seems annoyed at Fareeha, today she looks at her the way she used to: eager, interested, hoping for a chat.

“Angela?” The name leaves her tongue before it registers in her brain.

“You’re back,” she says, and turns from her chair to stand up and greet her. “How was Abu Dhabi?”

She grins a bit. “Still not happy about the omnics. But still too reliant on them to be willing to hire more foreign workers. They used to, back in the day, before everything was automated. Maybe they could learn a thing or two from the past.”

Angela stretches, and Fareeha’s eyes rove over her form. “We haven’t been talking much as of late, have we?”

“Well, I hardly ever see you.” She looks around, but the room looks the same as ever. Too many screens, too much tiny text, and one of the monitors is always tuned into some droning news channel. Angela has lots of physical papers scattered around too, among the hard glass tablets. The trash can is half-full with crumpled papers, and there is a lone cup of coffee sitting on her desk by the lamp. The lights in the room glow harsh fluorescent white, and the big digital clock on her desk reads “2:03.” “Long night?”

“I was looking for an excuse to take a break.” Angela meets her gaze, and she can feel her pulse quicken. “Join me?”

“All right.” She blinks at her. “Where?”

She waves a dismissive hand. “Anywhere.”

Ever the dutiful soldier, Fareeha follows her out. Watchpoint Gibraltar’s offices and living quarters are located in one area of the base, compact to make room for the satellites and huge pieces of equipment required to send them into space. There’s a small kitchen, a mess, a recreation room of sorts; there are several offices and a conference room; and the end of the hallway leads to Winston’s lab. It isn’t a military base by any means, so the dorms are few in number and sparsely furnished. She’ll report to Winston and be back in Giza in a few days, back and forth between Helix and Overwatch as usual. Her room will be occupied by someone else while she isn’t here.

Angela settles on a small lounge area, fishes a keycard out of her pocket and unlocks the door. The lights flicker on as they walk in. There’s a threadbare sofa and a cheap wooden table, a TV on the wall. Fareeha spots a few picture frames, but she doesn’t recognize the people in them.

Then Angela looks at her. She opens her mouth, works her tongue as if to say something, and then closes it. Her brow furrows. “I don’t want to talk about work.”

“We don’t have to talk about work,” says Fareeha. They’re still standing in the room, as though Angela had wanted to relax but couldn’t bring herself to sit or act particularly casual for that matter.

She looks away. No windows. The room is small, maybe a little cramped at this point. Fareeha smiles at her. Angela leans against the wall and sighs, her chest puffing out.

“How have you been?”

“I’ve been all right.” It isn’t a lie. She’s healthy; her job is stable and it pays well; and she likes the people she works with. Even her mother.

Angela looks her over, top to bottom, up and down. There’s nothing sexual about it, though a part of Fareeha hopes it could be. “Nothing?”

“Do you want me to complain?”

“You can.” She turns her head up, stares at the ceiling. “You always try to make your life seem so untroubled in comparison to mine.”

“I have a lot less on my plate compared to you, that’s for sure.” She knows what Angela wants to say. _Take me away. Let’s sneak out. Let’s go somewhere and do something we’ll regret in the morning. I don’t want to be here anymore._ It’s been like this for them since basically ever. They’re not together, because Angela doesn’t want them to be together. They’ve kissed a few times, and done more than that even fewer; Angela complains that the relationship is doomed, so she doesn’t want one. Fareeha will happily give her whatever she wants. She just doesn’t seem so sure about what that is, exactly.

“I can’t help you with anything?”

“I don’t think...” She shrugs. “I mean, nothing that isn’t part of your work already.”

Angela looks at her. “I feel as though every time we talk, it’s only ever about me.”

She smirks. “I thought you liked that.”

“I do,” she says, “but I also don’t want to monopolize our conversations. You never talk to me about your concerns.”

“Ah.” She rubs the back of her neck. “There’s nothing you can do, really. It’s not that interesting, anyway. I guess I have this kind of inferiority complex…” She shrugs helplessly. “But I think everyone feels that way sometimes.”

The look in her eyes says she’s interested. “Tell me more.”

“I just… That’s what happens when your mother saves the world. You know? Nothing you do is ever going to be enough.” Fareeha frowns a bit, then takes a seat on the couch. “I’m not going to save the world, but if I can’t save the world, then what use am I?” She laughs dryly. “I feel like I’m always in my mother’s shadow. Always ‘Ana Amari’s daughter.’ Never recognized for being myself.”

Angela is on the couch before she even realizes it. She sits close enough to feel her body heat. “Do you want to be recognized?”

“Eh.” She looks away, scowling. “I don’t think I ever cared, but a part of me still wants to, I suppose. If only so I’ll stop being compared to my mother all the time. She’s—she’s a nice mom, a good person. But it’s boring. I don’t have anything crazy going on in my life. I don’t…” Her hands clench and unclench. “I’m just a soldier. I take orders and I follow them. I don’t have the ear of an entire country, or of an entire international governing body.”

“But do you want that?”

Fareeha looks at her, and Angela stares back. “What?” she says. “Power?”

“You could do a lot more if you did.”

“I don’t trust myself with it.” Fareeha looks down at the floor. “You can. I… I don’t want that sort of power. I look at you in that office, buried in paperwork, and it looks miserable.” She laughs. “I want to make you feel better. Like you don’t have to be Dr. Ziegler all the time. I know I won’t amount to anything much, so… I don’t want to put any pressure on you, either.”

“You say that you won’t, but you’re hardly ambitious.”

“I don’t want to be. I want to help people. I want to protect the innocent. I don’t want to change the world, but it’s an expectation that’s been forced on me. Ana Amari’s daughter is supposed to do great things, and why? Because she followed in her mother’s footsteps. Because she joined the Army. I idolized Overwatch. I loved you guys; I grew up around you.” Fareeha exhales. “So I don’t know why being here makes me feel like shit. I mean, I come here with the most naive expectations, and it turns out to be more bureaucracy and politics and tedium than anything else, and I’m never doing anything that I wouldn’t be doing anyway.”

Angela is quiet for a while. “Do you like being here, though?”

Fareeha faces her with a look. “Do you?”

She cracks a grin, then shoves her shoulder. “That isn’t fair to ask.” Fareeha’s skin tingles at the contact; she wants to push her down onto the sofa, kiss her until she shuts up.

“I want to be here,” she says. “I want to make a difference. And I think I am, even if it’s not so easy to see, or if I’m not getting praise or awards or anything like that. It’s just that, between you and my mother, between these two amazing people, I feel kind of… small.” It’s ironic, she knows; she’s taller than either of them.

“I suppose this is the point where I tell you that what’s important is that you’re important to me.”

“Your ego is incredible sometimes, you know that?” Fareeha rolls her eyes, knows that’s not what she meant.

Angela gives her another shove, and Fareeha turns and kisses her so suddenly she squeaks. The sound is gratifying.

They part, a little later than she’d expected, and Angela looks at her with wide eyes. “You believe me?”

“No,” but her lips are burning and she’s sick of conversations that will lead them nowhere, “but I’m not really interested in talking about myself.”

“And if I am?”

She sighs. She has a hand clasped to Angela’s back, and she rubs her back obliviously, sinks her chin into her shoulder. “What can you tell me, honestly? I’m sure I’m a good daughter. Positive. And I’m a good—whatever I am to you. I know you love me. And that should be enough for me, right?”

“You want more,” says Angela.

“Because my mother saved the world and my lover is on the brink of saving it again. Yes,” she groans into her shoulder, “I may feel a little inadequate.”

Angela runs a hand through her hair. “You’ve saved plenty of people, though, no?”

“But not the world.”

“You don’t have to save the world, _Liebling_.”

“Says you.” She buries her face into her neck, kisses her and feels her arch into the contact. “I know I’m being distracting,” she murmurs into her skin. “That’s the point.”

“Here?” she gasps. “Really?”

They’ve been more egregious about it before. Fareeha grumbles into her neck, wants, feels something ugly and twisted inside of her egging her on—she’s wanted to shut her up for a while now, the whole time they’ve been talking. But not on the couch.

“I’m not that desperate.”

“What’s wrong, Fareeha?”

“You were the one who brought it up,” she says churlishly. “You wanted to know what was bothering me, and you got it.” She slips down, presses her head to her chest and hears her heartbeat, comforting in its rhythm.

Angela places her arms around her shoulders. “You don’t have to be a hero, you know.”

“That’s not convincing from someone who already is one.”

She presses a kiss to the top of her head. Fareeha sinks down lower to avoid her. “It isn’t enough to be mine?”

“Every time you say things like that, it sounds so fake.”

Her voice gains an edge. “Would you rather I agree with you, then?”

“If that’s what you really believe.” She curls up against her, into a ball, and Angela feels bigger than her.

“I don’t. Your mother and I are ordinary people. We aren’t special by nature—we were recognized for what we did. You don’t have to save the world, but there are other things you can do. And I don’t just mean supporting me or Ana or whomever.” Angela lets go and looks down at her. “I wish you would realize how much you do already—by virtue of your mindfulness, your kindness, your personality—but in case that isn’t enough, you’re certainly in a position to ask for more. You were in the army; you know how these matters go.”

“My personality? What does that mean?”

“You would be that oblivious,” she sighs. “You’re more emotionally available than most of the people working here. More than most people I know, period. Certainly more than me.”

“I don’t think I’m doing anything special.”

Angela tilts her chin up so that they’re looking at each other. “You are. The fact that you don’t think so is proof of that.”

“You’re praising me for being a decent person?”

“The environments I work in are completely cutthroat.”

“Maybe you should find a different job, then.”

“Maybe you should snap out of your funk and admit that I keep you around for more than just eye candy.”

Fareeha sits up and grins at her. “Well, I knew that much.”

“Then whatever are you worried about?” she asks, cupping her face. “You’re a kind person with a generous heart. Those are rarer than you’d think.”

“I have got to make more normal friends,” she says. “Spending all my time around geniuses and war heroes is going to drive me crazy.”

“I mean it, Fareeha.”

“I know you do. And I told you it’s not a big deal.” She pulls her hands away from her face. “I know you’re only trying to make me feel better, but it sounds insincere coming from you.”

Her brow crinkles. “I really don’t believe I’m any better than you.”

“But you don’t understand what it’s like to be a normal person.” She arches an eyebrow. “Do you?”

Angela has nothing to say to that.

She smiles in grim satisfaction. “You spent your whole life being called a ‘genius.’ A prodigy. You spent your whole life believing you were extraordinary, and you are. No one would deny that. And I don’t love you for being one, necessarily—I love you because you’re a mess. You’re cynical and kind of bitter and you argue with everyone all the time and then you try to act pleasant and it doesn’t work because you’re not a pleasant person… But you’re a good person, and you care too much. I love you because instead of nursing your giant ego, you’re using what power you have to change the world for the better. You could be selfish, and instead you’re spending all of your time trying to save lives, trying to resurrect an organization you hated back from the dead, because you recognize the value of it. It’s like… At every turn you’re given these opportunities to walk away, to only care about yourself, and you don’t.” She looks down. “You’re so steadfast, so resolute, it boggles the mind. And no amount of genius can compare to that.”

“Well,” Angela says, “for one, there is no such thing as ‘normal.’” She takes Fareeha’s hands in her own. “For another, without people like you, I probably would be selfish and egotistical and extremely lonely. And for a third, there is no possible way I could completely understand you, not because you’re a soldier and I’m a doctor, and not because you’re Egyptian and I’m Swiss, but because we are separate individuals, and you can’t expect me to know precisely how it feels to be you. I can tell that you are hurting, and maybe I am different in a sense—certainly not everyone is considered a genius—but I do want to help.” She squeezes her hands. “Not because I’m a doctor,” she says, looking her in the eye, “but because I never want you to feel as though you have to compare yourself to me. You have plenty of opportunities to do better. And before you tell me that you’re concerned that your time will never come—”

“I need to get over myself,” she says. “Right?”

“I wish you’d have a little more confidence. Whatever you’re looking for, you’re never going to find it. And you are far too kindhearted of a person to worry about whether you’re making enough of an impact on the world.” She kisses her and pulls away, almost too quickly to process. “It’s boring to be nice, yes, but many people aren’t, and of those most don’t even realize what they’re lacking. The fact that the universe hasn’t broken your spirit by now is a testament to your resilience as much as my lack of arrogance is to mine.”

Fareeha leans in and kisses her softly, unhurriedly. When they part, she looks at her. “So what you’re saying is that you love me because I’m nice, and that’s all that should matter.”

“Yes.” She looks completely serious.

She smiles in disbelief. “Because I’m nice.”

“I wouldn’t be doing any of this right now if I thought you were terrible.”

“So you could replace me with anyone who’s nice—”

“And you could replace me with any gritty, brooding idealist—”

“OK,” says Fareeha. “I see your point.”

“It didn’t have to be you, but it is. And if you’re so worried that you aren’t good enough for me, then we can stop and call it off and we never have to have this conversation again. _Ja_?”

“I am good enough for you,” she says, frowning. “For you, at least. You aren’t so special that I’d start worshiping the ground you walked on.”

“And to think, you were singing my praises a moment before.”

“Don’t let it get to your head.” Fareeha grabs her shoulders, pins her down to the sofa, smiles. “You are not too good for me.” She kisses her, buries her face in her neck and grins. Angela writhes against her touch. “Especially when you squirm like that.”

Fareeha returns to her quarters around four, and is perfectly content to wake up late the next morning, attend her debriefing, and spend the rest of the day doing nothing. Angela doesn’t make excuses as to why the both of them look so refreshed the next day, and no one bothers to ask. Presumably, they already know.

It’s a while longer before they have anything resembling a proper conversation, but Fareeha is OK with that, she thinks. Now, she doesn’t feel so adrift anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> No shame in portraying Mercy as a powerful, manipulative, politically savvy character. There's a reason Pharah complains about her ego so often here.
> 
> Pharah is perhaps a little more straightforward in comparison, and some people find her boring, but her concerns and frustrations are real and accessible and easier to understand than those of genius-doctor-cum-first-responder-cum-microbiologist Angela "Mercy" Ziegler. We all know someone who has an overbearing mother (if not ourselves).
> 
> If you're curious about continuity, my fic doesn't have any! You can imagine that this and my other Pharmercy fic all take place in separate universes.


End file.
